


You Are My Gift

by TheRedGlass



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Brace yourselves, Christmas, Christmas fic, Clint Barton Feels, Clint Feels, Cozy, F/M, Feels, Ficlet, Fluff, Fluffy, Natasha Feels, Natasha Romanov Feels, Oneshot, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt, Winter, proposal, this got really feelsy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 12:50:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7574656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRedGlass/pseuds/TheRedGlass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sight of snow doesn't have the cozy memories for Natasha that it does for Clint, so he accompanies her on a walk and tries to help her make new memories. Besides, there's a question he's been meaning to ask her...</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Are My Gift

**Author's Note:**

> I asked my followers to send me a ship and a Christmas song and I'd write a short fic for them. This one was Clintasha + Walking in a Winter Wonderland. Feels ensued.

It was properly snowing now, and Clint had noticed Natasha watching the weather through a window in Stark Tower when it first began. The look on her face would have been impossible for anyone else to read, but he knew her too well for that now, and so when she announces that she’s going for a walk, he announces that he’s going with her. She looks surprised for a moment, but she doesn’t protest.

They make their way to Central Park in silence, and he takes the time to admire the soft gray beanie she’s pulled over her hair, and the dark burgundy pea coat that hugs her figure. She hadn’t put any special effort into her outfit before they went, just shrugged on the first thing she could find, and she still looks like an angel.

He realizes he’s staring and forces himself to look away, to focus on the path as they make their way past couples and families also out enjoying the postcard-esque conditions. He waits until they’re far beyond anyone else, and then nudges her shoulder gently with his own.

“Russia?” he asks softly.

She nudges his shoulder back and gives him a sad little smile. “How’d you guess?”

“I can tell.” He hesitates, then adds, “I didn’t think you should be alone.”

She looks at him, not having the words to tell him what that means. The snow sends her back, back to the small moments of good and the years of hell at the same time, and the fact that he understands and still loves her despite knowing what she’s done is so unfathomable at times that it takes her breath away. And she can’t even tell him, though she tries to convey it in her eyes.

He sees it there and he smiles at her to let her know it’s okay. He indicates the snow around them with a nod of his head. “Like a picture from a magazine or something, huh?”

She nods, taking it all in.

“Perfect consistency too,” he adds with a grin. “I’d suggest a snowball fight, except I know you’d kick my ass.”

She smirks and shrugs. “What can I say?”

“How about a snowman?”

She gives him a look.

He gives one right back. “You never built a snowman? Come on, it’s fun!”

She rolls her eyes, pretending exasperation, but he can tell: she loves this. Natasha Romanoff is a goofball at heart, despite everything else.

He shows her how to roll the snow together, how to stack it, how to decorate it, and soon she’s stepping back to admire their handiwork: a stern looking snowman with an eyepatch. She tries to smother a smirk but fails.

“How’s that song go again?” Clint says, feigning ignorance, tapping his chin. “Oh wait, I’ve got it.” He ducks behind the snowman and drops his voice low and gravely and belts out “Are you motherfuckers married?”

Natasha can’t help it, she busts out laughing and hits Clint with her sleeve. “Clint!”

A sheepish grin is his only response.

On impulse, she bends down and addresses the snowman directly. “No, but you can do the job when you’re in town from whatever classified mission you just finished.”

Still laughing a little to herself, she straightens up and then freezes as she spies Clint down on one knee in the snow, holding up a delicate silver ring with three diamonds arranged in the center. The ring is strung on a thin red ribbon around his neck that he must have had hidden under his coat.

Her throat is dry and she can’t think what to ask first.

“I know this probably isn’t your thing,” Clint says quickly, trying to hold his voice steady. “But god Tasha, I love you so much I can’t breathe sometimes and I couldn’t think of how else to say it, the words I want don’t exist and everything else I can think of seems inadequate.”

She stares at him.

“I know it’s just a piece of paper, and I know it’s an antiquated tradition, but I had to at least ask, I just - ”

“Yes,” she whispers.

“ - it seemed like the thing to do, you know? Even though I’m the worst at jewelry, and I had to put this on a string because I knew otherwise I’d drop it in the snow -”

“Yes,” she whispers again, her voice thin and delicate.

“And I mean, Christmas is so - ”

“Clint,” she says struggling to make her voice louder and stronger. “I said yes.”

“You-?” He stares at her blankly for a long moment. “Oh.”

She kneels down in front of him in the snow because now he seems incapable of movement too.

“I, um, I’ll be honest,” he says. “That was…not the answer I expected.”

“It wasn’t the one I expected to give,” Natasha admits in something just above a whisper, looking into his eyes and feeling her chest swell with the feeling of safety and gratitude and utter acceptance. Maybe it is just paper, and maybe it is antiquated, and maybe it’s commonplace, but after the lives they’ve led, don’t they deserve something simple? Something that non-superheroes get to have?

He swallows, looking back at her. “You really want to?”

“I do.”

They look at one another and everything around them fades away as a warmth builds in the space between them, as though their emotions were flooding the very air like the soft smoke of their breath in the cold. Clint fumbles the ring from around his neck and Natasha helps him untie the ribbon and he slips the band on her finger. She stares at it for a moment and then looks back up at him and their eyes lock and she sees his watering and knows her own are wet but their faces bloom into impossible smiles and then lean in and try to kiss but they’re smiling too much to allow their lips contact and it takes several tries before they manage it, and they’re breathing each other in, hearts fit to burst with this incomprehensible love they’ve both found.


End file.
